Meetings

We either love them or we hate them but mostly we hate them. Why? Because often meetings are badly organised and lack purpose. How many times have we heard someone droning on about something they’ve done of no interest to us, seemingly to torture us? The fact is; people these days are deluged with information and so have become quite selective about what they listen to. If the information is perceived as having no relevancy to the individual, then it will be filtered out. People have to see “what’s in it for them”.

So let’s look some types of meetings people attend.

Information Meetings

These meetings may end up being unpopular as they may reinforce the notion that management is the “all-knowing all-wise master”. It seems to me that any meeting where giving feedback and asking questions is difficult or discouraged (“information” meetings) should be done in some other way, or risk the disengagement of the audience. So if you are organising this kind of meeting try to make feedback and questions possible. For example instead of one big meeting, a number of smaller meetings could be set up.

What meetings are really for

Meetings should be held for giving and receiving information and feedback, deciding on actions and negotiating, assigning and accepting responsibility and recording issues completed.

For example if management wants to implement a new project, they need the key stakeholders, such as lower management, to buy in on the project, give their ideas, offer feedback and negotiate/accept responsibility.

All participants in a meeting should have a valid reason for being there, that is they should be ‘stakeholders’. Lower level employees may be required to provide something of specific value, such as the “view from the production line”. That person should be one of the better employees with a willingness to give of their experience to help improve processes and the company (and themselves).

What can go wrong

Let’s say management wants to implement a project. It nominates a convenor and some discussion points. Stakeholders are invited and the meeting is held. Discussion on the key points occurs, relevant issues are raised by stakeholders which are included in decisions and responsibilities and due dates are assigned.

Now what can happen is that at the follow up meeting a month later, the convenor asks for feedback on progress, but is met by stony silence, or worse still, finds no-one actually attending the meeting. What went wrong?

Well one thing might have been that the convenor did not provide meeting minutes within a day or two after the meeting to remind everyone of their responsibilities and due dates. Or he failed to remind everyone to attend just before the meeting.

Difficulties of Managing Meetings

Looking at the actual process involved in running a meeting it involves:-

<> drafting agenda,

<> taking minutes in the meeting, noting completed issues, actions on existing issues, new issues

<> creating the minutes file from the amended agenda file.

Running successful meetings is clearly a daunting task and the convenor must be very organised. Difficulties include:-

<> s/he has to create at least two files per meeting, agenda and minutes.

<> after several meetings there are many separate files. There may be outstanding items from any of the previous meetings, which can be easily lost.

<> unclosed issues raised in a meeting can be easily overlooked at later meetings without review of all previous minutes, cutting and pasting items from minutes into new agendas.

<> no easy way of searching these files for information such as 'How many actions does Joe have?'.

<> There is no easy way of categorising different types of issues without repetitious cutting and pasting of data.

<> There is no easy way of separating and categorising different types of events and meetings.

Ask the question "Why do we have business meetings?" Isn't it to improve the business is some way or achieve some business objective?

Meetings as a process – PDCA Cycle

In fact it is much more useful to see meetings as a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) or 'Continual Improvement' cycle as described in ISO 9001 Quality standard. In a continually improving system actions and impacts are monitored, reviewed and improved based on objective evidence. The output of one PDCA cycle is frequently the input for the next PDCA cycle. Real improvement my take several rounds of the improvement cycle.

Incorporating these ideas in a workable meeting process

To facillitate meetings and continual improvement a specialised database has been developed by Integrated Management Systems using Microsoft Access. In this one database agendas and minutes are linked in a continual cycle of improvement removing the need for separate (unsearchable) agenda and minutes data files. There is no cutting and pasting data, everything is handled in only one file, with each issue occupying one line of the database. Information is entered by means of a simple electronic entry form. Information is retrieved by filtering the data in fully customisable ways.

Meetings are guided by database reports. Any issue that is not 'closed' ('Issue closed-signature' field in the Entry Form left blank) always appears in the ‘Unclosed Issues’ report. Issues closed at one meeting appear one more time at the next meeting. The meeting process therefore involves reviewing previous meeting closed issues report, tackling unclosed issues, then dealing, with new agenda items. The database never loses any data. It is always available for later review. All issues that are raised remain in the database as separate lines. They are available for searching at any time later, filtered by meeting type, person responsible or issue type.

Meetings are categorised by type, meaning that the same database can be used for a number of different types of meetings. Or just copy the file to start two separate databases for separate meeting types.

Variations of this review process have been developed for:-

1) To do lists,

2) Project management,

3) Audit,

4) Nonconformance, Corrective and Preventive Action

5) Safety and Environmental Incidents and Injury management

6) Meetings of all types

Contact Integrated Management Systems intms@aapt.net.au for more information about Access database systems for meetings, audits etc.